U.S. Media's Olympic Math: 1 Gold = 1 Silver = 1 Bronze

Price per Oz, as of 8/22/2008
Gold: $ 827.40
Silver: $ 13.48
Bronze: $ 0.50 to $0.75

When one looks at the Olympics medals tally at yahoo.com , she finds the Medals Count with US on top (107), followed by China (96) and Russia (69). All data as of 9 PM 8/23/2008.
NYT has the same data, ranking the countries in the same order.
WSJ has similar rankings.

Adding the number of gold, silver and bronze medals to come up with the 'total' does not "add up" as it is beyond logic, and is equivalent to adding blackberries, bananas and grapes.

What is rather dubious and self-congratulatory about this is that China has 49 gold medals, followed by US (34) and Russia (22). While there are no established equivalencies or conversion rates between the medals, if one considers the market value of the metals a gold medal is worth 61 times the value of a silver medal, and more than a 1000 times that of bronze. It is rather transparent that China is WAY AHEAD of other countries in the overall "medals" in the Olympics. Why are the news media resorting to this deliberate distortion in portraying the "Olympic" medals performance? It is precisely this behavior that encourages jingoist behavior and ignorance and then hatred of other countries and cultures. In other countries, the media rank nations on their gold medal performances. One can look at BBC's medals tally, as an example. FT.com also has an interesting outsider perspective on this phenomenon of self aggrandizement- see Outside Edge: Fool’s gold consoles unloved America.

"Amateur"ish U.S. reaction to Chinese Medal Grab

There is an interesting article in the FT today- "US Olympic team eyes state help as China challenges sporting order." It reads as follows: "As the US Olympic team contemplates the abrupt loss of its longstanding dominance of the medals table to its Chinese hosts, American officials are looking at asking the federal government for money to make sure it never happens again.
In what has the potential to become a sporting version of the cold war, China has poured millions into its state sports system to produce medal winners at the Beijing Games, and the US is positioning itself to retaliate.
The US team, which gets no money from Washington, relies on only $150m a year from sponsors, fundraising and a share of revenues from the International Olympic Committee.As a result, China has opened up such a comfortable lead over the US in the race for gold medals that it is poised to top the tally of overall medals for the first time, a position the US has held for 16 of the 23 Games in which it has competed......"

During the second half of the previous century, private funds supported U.S. Amateur athletes while the state governments of the communist countries (Soviet Union, East Germany, etc.) supported their athletes. In the 1980s and 1990s, the "professional" athletes took over the Olympics, stripping it of any semblance of "fair and equitable" competition. When the U.S. sponsorships and private fund-raising raise $150 million to support the athletes, how are the "less fortunate" countries in Africa, Asia or Central/South America expected to compete?

What is really disturbing is that according to the article, "As the US Olympic team contemplates the abrupt loss of its longstanding dominance of the medals table to its Chinese hosts, American officials are looking at asking the federal government for money to make sure it never happens again." One can understand a team asking the government for money, but why can't the U.S. people accept other countries winning? Why can't the people realize that if other countries' athletes win, then they can raise the bar for everyone, and they can inspire whole nations? It is the notion of "we should win everything and everyone else SHOULD lose" attitude that shows a lack of thought and a deficiency of human spirit and human sharing- selfishness in its most gross exhibition.